In recent weeks, JBHE has reported on milestone appointments of Black students as editors of prestigious law reviews at the University of Minnesota and Syracuse University. Now we can add a third milestone appointment to the list. Jeannine Holmes has made history as the first Black editor-in-chief of the Law Review at Georgia State University.
“It means a lot to me,” Holmes says. “I think representation really matters. For me, it’s always been important to see Black people, especially Black women, in legal spaces. It gives Black women the motivation to keep striving for their goals, and it just makes it more comfortable when you know you’re going to see yourself in places.”
Holmes says it has always been her goal to become a lawyer, and as an Army brat who moved all around the country during her childhood, she has taken a similarly winding path to get where she is today. Holmes graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in English in 2008. She then studied fashion for a year at New York’s Parsons School of Design. While in New York, Holmes started a fashion company with a classmate. In 2016, Holmes relocated to Atlanta to work at Emory Healthcare where her interest in law deepened. She discovered the College of Law’s nationally recognized part-time program, which gave her the opportunity to enroll in law school while keeping her job as senior manager of Emory’s Sports Medicine Program.
As leader of the Law Review, Holmes says she aims to continue the “progress made with diversity and inclusion. I also want to find ways to make the editing process more efficient and deal with all the changes because of COVID-19.”
